“Jan!”

He realized then it was a long shout, coming from the outside. Someone was calling him from up the slope. The call came again, nearer this time: Dagg. Dagg had come looking for him. Jan stood frozen in the dusky dimness barely ten paces from the sleeping wingcat. He wished feverishly that his friend would hurry and pass on, give up the search, or else be still.

“Jan!”

This last shout was closer, louder, more insistent. He saw the formel’s ears twitch once. Her cat’s eye opened slowly, fixing on him—then snapped wide. He felt as if the air had vanished from his throat.

“Jan!”

Dagg’s voice had grown impatient, anxious now. The wingcat started up. Jan shied and scrambled back from her, feeling his hindquarters come up hard against the wall. He stared at the gryphon. The gryphon stared at him.

“Come hunting, little princeling?” the gryphon said. “Found me out in my cave just as we found you out in yours, my mate and I.”

The formel moved, leaning forward into the sunlight. Her pupils constricted into slits. Jan felt his heart galloping inside his ribs.

“Your father killed my mate not this hour past,” she told him quietly, tentatively, cat-and-mouse. “Your father is a mighty warrior, is he not? Kilkeelahr was a mighty warrior as well among my people, was my mate.”

Jan was aware of the hard stone wall pressing his flank and side, of the sweat beneath the long hairs of his coat. Cold fear had begun to numb him.

“But he fell out of favor with the high clans,” the formel murmured, singsong, seductively. “Fell out of favor, did my mate. But I dreamed a dream. A white salamander spoke to me. So I proposed this foray, to kill the black prince of the unicorns, and buy our way back into power with glory.”

The light of dusk played across the colors of her eyes as she spoke, poured in and among them like water, making them gleam. Gazing into those eyes, Jan felt his mind slacken. It seemed he could see mountains, canyons, many gryphons in the formel’s eye. Her voice took on a cutting edge. He hardly noticed.

“Why ever did you ítichi come here? Northern plainsdwellers, asking no one’s leave to settle. Our leaders have had enough of you; it will not be many years before all the clans are united and Isha grants our prayers for fair winds. Then we will come in a body and harry you out.”

The light in the formel’s eye shifted and spangled. Jan saw flocks of gryphons swooping and fighting, tearing each other’s nests, pashing each other’s eggs and carrying off one another’s young—things such as he had never seen or heard in ballad or lay.

“Why do you trouble the demesnes of the gryphons? This was our land before you stole it.”

Around the iris of each of her eyes circled a narrow band of gold: a thin, bright ring that went round and over, over and round. Jan felt his limbs melting away. There was a serpent in the gryphon’s eye, he realized slowly, a snake and a hawk that danced and circled one another. The formel’s voice lilted, drifting in and out of his thoughts.

“Your father escaped our plans and cut down my mate. This night the pans will feast on him—on me as well, they would have, had I not torn myself free among the trees…. But do not think you will escape me, little princeling.”

The hawk snatched the snake in its talons. The serpent coiled about the falcon’s feet and stung it in the throat. The falcon screamed, clutched at its prize and rose in the air, to carry the serpent, still writhing and stinging, away.

“I have a nest of hungry hatchlings. Do not think you will escape me….”

“Jan!”

That other voice cut across his senses like a slap of cold seawater. Jan started, coming to himself. The cave stood narrow and solid about him. The wingcat crouched, eyeing him, and Dagg was calling him from somewhere up the slope.

He heard the formel clucking in frustration as she saw him wake. Only then did he realize what she had been doing—mesmerizing him while she crept close enough to spring. The distance between them had halved. Jan saw the formel’s pupils dilate, ruby colored in the flame-colored sunset. She sprang.

Jan dodged, his bad leg giving under him, and his knees struck the stone floor of the cave. The gryphon shrilled as she missed her strike, coming up hard against the wall. The narrow grotto echoed with her cry. The lunge had taken her past him. Jan skittered to his feet and spun around, vaulting over the staggered gryphon. With a surge of speed he never knew he had, Jan sprinted for the egress of the cave.

Jan bolted for the mouth of the cave, clambering over the heap of fallen earth, and suddenly stopped short. There was nowhere to flee. The ground a pace ahead of him dropped away in a sheer precipice. He caught a flash of green and gold among the tops of the trees below: the dead tercel.

Then he heard a rush in the cave behind him and sprang hard to one side just as the beak of the formel snapped empty air. A narrow goat trail appeared from nowhere, threading the cliff side before him. Jan dashed along it. The gryphon shrieked, scrambling after him, her wings thrashing. He heard her talons scathing the soft, wet rock.

“Jan!”

The cry rang out from the slope above. He saw Dagg standing near the lookout knoll.

“Fly!” Jan shouted. “Dagg, fly!”

Behind him the gryphon screamed and rose into the air. Dagg stood staring, too astonished to move. The goat trail had vanished. Jan threw himself up the steep, rocky slope, the ground crumbling and sliding beneath his hooves. His injured leg wobbled like a dead tree limb.

“Shy!” shouted Dagg.

Jan shied, stumbled, and fell to one side, too late. The formel’s talons dug into his shoulders. Jan thrashed wildly. He heard Dagg crying out—alarm or battle yell, he could not tell—as the wingcat hoisted Jan aloft. They hovered just below the hillcrest, almost eye to eye with Dagg.

Jan kicked and twisted, and felt one heel strike home. He kicked again, harder—again. The formel shrieked and snarled, holding him away from her. Then Dagg was charging, rearing, lashing out with his forehooves. The formel pulled back from the hillside, straining to rise.

Jan felt dizzied, as though he had been dancing in circles. His vitals turned. The world below him was sinking, sinking by hoofspans away. Beneath, Dagg yelled, flailing desperately, but the formel had managed to rise beyond his range. Her wings heaved and struggled. Jan’s senses swam. He knew beyond all hope that he was lost.

Then another unicorn burst from the trees. She sprang past Dagg, her wild, ringing battle yell snapping Jan back to himself. Tek lunged at the gryphon with head down, her horn aimed. Jan felt the formel tense and twist away as the skewer grazed her side. She writhed.

Tek came to earth. She lost her footing and went down. Dagg charged and leapt, missed, leapt again. Jan glimpsed his friend’s unsharpened colt’s horn draw blood from the formel’s flank. She stamped him hard across the forehead with her lion’s paw. Dagg fell to earth, rolling, then staggered to his feet, shaking his head.

Jan twisted in the gryphon’s grasp, throwing his head back, trying to bring his own horn into play. He felt it glance across her throat. She screamed again, grappling with his horn, holding him with only one claw now. Her talons grated against his shoulder blades.

Jan felt his head wrenched painfully, and at that moment nearly slipped from her grasp. They fell a few feet in the air, the gryphon trying again to seize him. Jan felt his heels brush the crest of the hill. Tek came charging up the slope and wounded the formel in the shoulder, from behind.

The wingcat staggered in the air, whirling to bat Tek’s horn away. Jan pitched forward. His knees struck earth. The gryphon’s weight came down and knocked the breath from him. He could not gather his legs beneath him.